We have been lending a helping hand this week. Can you remember one of the letters we received from Santa asking us to become honorary elves and help him prepare for Christmas in his workshop. So… meet the P1M elves…
We have been helping Santa through our Play: Plan, Do, Review sessions. Read on to find out about how we have been helping Santa.
Just Play?
Red: (Maths: Measurement and Pattern) Santa has needed us to help him wrap up presents. We have to estimate how much wrapping paper we need to wrap up presents, we have been very good at measuring out the correct amount of paper. Santa doesn’t have much wrapping paper though and he has needed us to design some wrapping paper. He likes his wrapping paper to have a pattern though so we must make sure we create a pattern. We also must remember to write a label on the present after we have wrapped it.
Blue: (Literacy: Writing) We MUST write our letters to Santa! How will Santa know what presents we want if we don’t write him a letter? We know how to format a letter correctly (where the address goes). After we have wrote our letter we need to put it in an envelope. We have also been learning about stamps, if we want our letter to get to Santa really quickly we know to look out for a number 1 on a stamp. It is also very important to write Santa’s name and address on the envelope before we post it in the special Santa’s postbox.
Yellow: (Literacy: Writing) Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a Christmas card! At this station we design, create and write our Christmas cards. We each have a special folder just outside our classroom, if we receive a card, the sender posts the card in our special folder. This is quite tricky as we have to try really hard to read our peers names. We love checking our folders at the end of the day to see if we have been given a card.
Green: (Maths: Patterns) Santa has been so busy that he hasn’t had time to decorate his workshop. He has asked us to make decorations for him – Christmas cracker and baubles for his tree. But remember, Santa loves patterns! We need to make sure our designs follow a pattern. We have been using a range of different materials at this station – foam shapes, pom-poms, stickers, glue, crayon, glitter – it has been a bit messy! I’m sure Santa will love his decorations!
Purple: (Literacy: Listening and Talking; Imaginative Story Telling) We have been pretending to be Santa and his friends. At this station we can make a Christmas themed mask and act out a story with our peers. It is important that we take turns and allow each other to have a turn at talking during story telling. Miss Meechan has been enjoying listening to the different stories we have created.
Orange: (Maths: Data Handling) Santa needs to know all about toys that people want this Christmas. We need to separate the toys into categories for him. We look through toy catalogues and pick out some toys and stick them into the correct category. Kerr was sorting out girls toys and boys toys. Adam and Sophie were sorting out big toys and small toys. We hope this helps Santa get ready for Christmas.
In the Christmas spirit now? This week we have started rehearsing for our nativity show! We have all been working so hard during our performances. We can’t wait to practise on the stage next week! Well done boys and girls, I have been very proud of how hard you have been working rehearsing your songs and lines.
Even with all of this going on we have still squeezed in lots of other learning tasks! We are working extra hard with our addition. This week we have been working on ordering an addition number sentence. We know that the biggest number in an addition sentence always goes at the end (after the equals sign) because when you add two numbers together the total is always more. We played this game on the smart board to help us understand this concept more:
http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/SumSense/sumadd.html
We have been working on our imaginative writing this week. Our stimulus for our writing lesson this week was this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEpiCEPkX7o
We then had to think about if we were that little girl, where we would like a bubble to take us. Stefan wanted his bubble to take him to see the Mona Lisa! Jakub wanted his bubble to take him to the dessert. Kyle wanted his bubble to take him to the sky. Ask your child where they wanted their bubble to take them?
We enjoy having learning conversations with our teacher. During this time we look at our dreams, check if we have achieved these dreams and set a new one if we need to. We also talk to Miss Meechan about what we enjoy at school and we can tell her if there is anything that is concerning us. One of our focuses for this month has been ‘achieving’. We have been self-assessing how we feel about our achievements, we keep this sheet in our special yellow folder in our classroom. Here are some of the dreams we have set this week:
Have a lovely weekend,
Miss Meechan and P1M
